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The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

This tool reviews how primary care providers should discuss and treat alcohol or opioid dependence with their patients, including using extended-release, injectable naltrexone and administering buprenorphine/naloxone.

Many American physicians who prescribe buprenorphine to treat individuals addicted to opioids are prescribing substantially below the patient limits allowed by law. More than 20 percent of waivered physicians treated only three or fewer patients.

This report describes the research questions, data sources, and potential designs that might be used to evaluate the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic demonstration, in hopes of providing evidence to policymakers on impact and value.

Analyses of longitudinal data on crime and delinquency need to address individual-level effects to better understand factors like social context that may contribute to their association, and to devise targeted interventions.

Smoking prevention programs may benefit from incorporating a social network-based approach to help youth foster relationships with lower-risk peers; programs should also address other forms of substance use.

Opioid overdoses were the greatest cause of accidental death in America in 2014. A panel discussion at RAND addressed the epidemic, including societal attitudes toward pain and addiction, poor understanding of the mechanics of addiction itself, economic drivers, legal responses, and treatment approaches.

Guidance on how to prevent or treat the misuse of prescription drugs in the U.S. Department of Defense and Veterans Administration is similar to directives outside the military system, and tends to focus on opioids.

Helpful strategies for establishing consistent nicotine patch use include staying motivated to use a nicotine patch, linking patch use to daily routines, and managing expectations of what a patch can do.

This tool presents detailed technical specifications for the set of quality measures identified and specified in a study of the link between improvements in processes of care for alcohol misuse and improvements in outcomes, known as the AQual study.

Using data from a follow-up sample (N = 491) and a community sample (N = 369) of adult daily and nondaily smokers, we replicated the findings from Edelen et al. (2014a) and examined the correlations of legacy smoking measures with the new item bank scores.

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Researcher Spotlight

Behavioral and Social Scientist

Eric R. Pedersen is a behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. His research interests are primarily in areas of young adult/adolescent alcohol use and comorbid mental health disorders. Pedersen has received funding to develop brief, online interventions to reduce alcohol misuse among young…

Co-Director, RAND Center for Causal Inference

Beth Ann Griffin is a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation, where she codirects the RAND Center for Causal Inference and is a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. Her statistical research focuses on causal effects estimation when using observational data. Her substantive…

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